Nearly half of Canadians want to deport people who are illegally
crossing into Canada from the United States, and a similar number
disapprove of how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is handling the influx,
according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Monday.

A
significant minority, four out of 10 respondents, said the border
crossers could make Canada "less safe," underlining the potential
political risk for Trudeau's Liberal government.

If this poll is to be believed, it begs the questions: is the rest of the population hiding under a rock?

North Korea said Monday it is not frightened by U.S. threats of
possible pre-emptive military action to halt its nuclear and missile
buildup.

A spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry slammed U.S. Secretary
of State Rex Tillerson’s recent talk of tougher sanctions, more
pressure, and possible military action, and said the North would not be
deterred in its nuclear program.

“The nuclear force of (North Korea) is the treasured sword of justice
and the most reliable war deterrence to defend the socialist motherland
and the life of its people,” the official Korean Central News Agency
quoted the spokesman as saying.

**

Chang said Tillerson “spoke to the
Chinese pretty harshly in private, but in public, though, he adopted
China’s formulations of mutual cooperation, win-win this, and also
respecting China’s core interests.”

“I think that was a mistake,” he
said. “Nonetheless, we will see what the result is because, clearly, the
United States and China right now have some irreconcilable interests.
The Chinese want to support the North Koreans. They do that because
every time the North Koreans do something provocative, we run to China,
we ask for their cooperation, they get bargaining chips, and they
distract us from things that are important – such as cyberattacks on
American companies and the American government, of course; South China
Sea; South Korea; you name it.”

The US, like South Korea, have to put an end to this insufferable stalemate and punish China for its support of North Korea, not beg it to turn that Third World dictatorship around.

Would the North Koreans fight to the death for the Kim dynasty, brow-beaten or not?

I'm guessing not. It's brainwashed and starving population would be hard-pressed to fight for the only fat man in the country.

Canada
could undermine the global justice system by failing to extradite a
pair accused of orchestrating the honour killing of a 25-year-old B.C.
woman, a government lawyer argued today before the Supreme Court of
Canada.

Janet
Henchey, a lawyer for the Attorney General of Canada, made the case to
extradite two B.C. residents to India to face trial for their role in
the murder of Jaswinder (Jassi) Sidhu in 2000.

India
has requested the extradition of Malkit Sidhu and Surjit Badesha, the
mother and uncle of Jassi. Her body was dumped after her throat was
slashed, and her young husband, Sukhwinder (Mithu) Sidhu was badly
beaten and left for dead.

The
pair has argued they could face neglect or mistreatment in India's
prison system, but Henchey argued any potential risks are general in
nature, not "personalized" to the pair. Henchey noted that all countries
have problems such as overcrowding in prisons, including Canada.

She said the case before the high court has broad implications for Canada's role in administering international justice.

"It
undermines the entire concept of extradition and sending people to the
country where they have allegedly committed a crime if we refuse to
surrender based on imperfections in our treaty partners, even sometimes
large imperfections, without a more specific connection to the person
sought's situation," she said.

"If
we do that, we fail to recognize the importance of extradition to the
international community as a mechanism for avoiding impunity."

In response to Senator Lynn Beyak’s assertion that Canadians ignore
the “abundance of good” that happened in residential schools, one of the
system’s primary operators issued a statement Monday saying “there was
nothing good.”

“There was nothing good about children going missing and no report
being filed. There was nothing good about burying children in unmarked
graves far from their ancestral homes,” reads a statement co-signed by the Most Rev. Fred Hiltz, archbishop of the Anglican Church of Canada.

That phenomenon was on display again this week, following the
publication of last Saturday’s story, “4,000 Children died in
residential schools; Truth commission.” As that story detailed,
“commission officials expect that number to rise as researchers access
much more complete files from Library and Archives Canada and
elsewhere.”

Letter writers commenting on that story this week complained that the article lacked important historical context.

“Nice work, National Post, as you continue to dump on the
charitable work accomplished by generations of selfless missionaries,
physicians, nurses and teachers of the Canadian North,” wrote C. Lutz,
of Haliburton, Ont. “[This story] heavily spins out a ‘physical and
sexual abuse’ [narrative] as if 150,000 Indian and Inuit children had
gained nothing good from taxpayer-provided white education. At least
some of them learned enough English and French to, fluently, play the
system and bite the hand that had fed them.”

“By today’s standards, 4,000 deaths out of a total of 150,000
students is shocking,” wrote Russel Williams of Georgeville, Que. “But
given the period covered, 1870 to 1996, it may compare quite favourably
with Canada at large, or Canadian aboriginal communities specifically,
for the same period. One must bear in mind that much of this period
predates immunization for smallpox, whooping cough, and diphtheria. It
also predates penicillin for treatment of TB. Given the above, perhaps
the statistic is not as alarming as it first might seem.”

“It was undoubtedly a terrible thing to be taken from your family,
but in the early days, the reserves were impoverished and 90% of First
Nations people were infected with tuberculosis,” added Michelle
Stirling. “It is hard to say if the students got tuberculosis at the
residential schools. And until the 1950s, tuberculosis was the leading
cause of death of all Canadians.

“I am aware that some people will feel that I am defending the known
cases of abuse and cruelty — I do not defend these,” Ms. Stirling
continued. “My own father was the victim of the same [abuse] at the
hands of his own white Anglo-Saxon teachers at his British boarding
school. He used to have his left hand beaten black and blue and tied
behind his back because he was left-handed.”

We also heard from a non-native who attended the St. Paul’s Indian
Residential School in southern Alberta (the Blood/Kainai Reserve) for
six years.

“When so many Canadians rely on publications like the National Post
to stay informed on important issues, it is disappointing to see an
article like that,” wrote Mark DeWolf of Halifax. “How does this figure
compare to the number of First Nations children who died outside
of the schools? Over 126 years and out of 150,000 students, the figure
is perhaps not so surprising, given the deplorable health conditions on
some reserves and high rates of communicable illness. More could and
should have been done to ensure the health of these students, but let’s
have responsible journalism, not emotional pandering to readers.”

“The last of the Truth and Reconciliation Canada (TRC) national
events comes up at the end of March in Edmonton, and I hope to be
there,” Mr. DeWolf added. “It will be interesting to see if the media
just parrot what native leaders, TRC employees and other aboriginal
activists repeatedly say, or if the occasion gives rise to some serious
discussion of the schools, the harm they did and the more positive
aspects as well.”

On Wednesday, we ran a letter that began as follows: “There are many
native Canadians who appreciate the benefits of the schools where they
received an education that enabled them to cope with life outside the
reserves. How about recounting some of their testimonials?”

A few more notes came in after that, each echoing that same point. Here is one example.

“How refreshing to see the letter from Michael Barnes,” wrote Jeannie
L’Esperance. “When traveling by plane in the North, I have had people
tell me how grateful they were for the training they received in a
residential school, which helped them find employment.”

Global Affairs has instructed diplomatic missions in the United
States to stop using life-size cardboard cut-outs of the prime minister
to promote Canada.

The order follows the revelation last week that prime ministerial
replicas turned up at an event last June organized by the Canadian
consulate in Atlanta and earlier this month at a Canadian music festival
in Austin, Tex.

The Canadian embassy in Washington also rush-ordered a cut-out of its
own for use at Canada Day celebrations last year, at a cost of $147.79,
including $72.80 for next-day delivery.

Northern Ireland’s government launched a program in 2012 to promote
greater use of renewable sources to generate energy. Arlene Foster, the
enterprise minister at the time, introduced the plan, which subsidized
the use of alternative fuels by businesses and non-household users. It
offered payments for 20 years for the installation of systems using
solar energy, heat pumps or biomass boilers burning wood pellets.

When interest suddenly surged in 2015 an inquiry was called,
concluding that the government had inadvertently established subsidies
were worth more than the cost of the fuel itself; rather than
encouraging conservation as intended, the scheme provided an incentive
to burn as much fuel as possible. Media reported that a farmer heating
an empty shed could make about $2 million over the 20-year period. A
Ferrari dealer was criticized for using the subsidy program, which
became known as “cash for ash,” to heat his showroom. Since there was no
cap on subsidies, the auditor-general reported, “the more heat that is
generated, the more is paid.”

Foster is now First Minister and admits the whole scheme was badly
botched. “We can all agree … that there were shocking errors and
failures in the RHI scheme and a catalogue of mistakes,” she told the
Northern Ireland Assembly. Not only did it pay people to waste energy,
it was badly policed and poorly enforced, she said. The program has been
shut down, at an estimated cost of $1 billion.

While Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will never admit it, the 2015
Paris climate treaty Canada signed with great fanfare died last week.

It died because of the release of U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2018 budget plan.

While Trump has to get it through the U.S. Congress, which means
parts of it are unlikely to survive, his clear intention to gut U.S.
climate change policy by dismantling the Environmental Protection Agency
spells the death knell for the Paris treaty.

Trump is proposing deeper cuts to the EPA than any other government
agency, reducing its $8.2 billion budget by 31%, laying off 19% of its
15,000 staff and cutting 50 programs.

That includes funding for Barack Obama’s signature climate change
initiative, his Climate Action Plan, to reduce America’s use of
coal-fired electricity.

An Australian teen who was attacked by a crocodile after jumping into
a crocodile-infested river on a dare was recovering from serious wounds
to his arm, officials said Monday, as authorities recovered the body of
another man who also may have been attacked by a crocodile in nearby
waters.

Lee de Paauw, an 18-year-old from Queensland state, was at a hostel
in the northern Queensland town of Innisfail around 2:30 a.m. on Sunday
when he started bragging that he could swim in the river, a known
habitat for aggressive saltwater crocodiles, said Sophie Paterson, a
British backpacker who was at the hostel.

She and several others egged him on, though none of them thought he’d actually get in the water, Paterson said.

But get in the water he did. Seconds later, a crocodile latched onto him.

Homework is like any other skill - use it or lose it. If students do not memorise or apply the knowledge acquired at school, it will become useless to them.

That being said, plying on endless hours of pointless busywork is a great way to turn students off from academics altogether. It would be better to give students assignments that have them practise skills in a way that is mnemonic and not onerous.